At CruzHacks 2018, students compete to think big, code fast

SANTA CRUZ >> The low thrumming of harried student voices escalated to an all-out din as the noon hour arrived. Empty pizza boxes, energy drinks, sleeping bags, pillows and caffeine bars littered the tables as red-eyed, yawning programmers slammed out the last of their code as the freeze for CruzHacks 2018 was announced.

Three days of invention, coding and developing had come to an end for hundreds of participants who came to the fifth annual hackathon at UC Santa Cruz with the hope of creating a noteworthy project.

Nedda Saremi, a bioinformatics doctoral student at UCSC, said it was a close call, with the project coming together in the last few hours.

“We barely made it,” said Saremi, whose team created a virtual reality learning experience of this year’s Women’s March. “We probably finished two minutes before deadline.”

The event brought out approximately 40 judges from tech companies including Google, Apple, Syndio and Super Micro, and nerves ran high among those being judged. One of the judges was Scott Smith, who works in cyber security at CIO Professional Services.

“I am excited to see things that brings together a lot of different pieces and ideas together as a whole,” Smith said. “Anytime you build, you don’t want to build an answer looking for a question. It should answer a question maybe someone doesn’t even know needs asking.”

Ideas included tools that could censor a user’s social media feeds, add captions to photos automatically and others in the areas of education, fire prevention. One idea to combat bike theft while also allowing for data collection was a lock that also allowed you to virtually check on your bike using your mobile phone while away.

For Saremi, her inspiration came from disappointment that she would not be able to attend the march while also wanting to pay homage to the strong women who inspired her, but the inception of the idea came from Thomas Ng.

“Most of the people I see as role models are women,” Ng said. “My mom passed away and she was who inspired me, the one who truly understood me, accepted my dedication and efforts in the sciences.”

A timeline of women’s rights in the U.S. was integrated into their virtual world as well as quotes facts, organizations involved and even a plug for a website where users can register to vote. Having no VR experience, they said it took up to the early morning hours to get from boxes of text to interactive images and include sound and voices recorded from the event. A relief for the programmers who said they faced doubts up to the last minute about whether or not they would be able to pull it off.

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“It was an incorporation of a bunch of tidbits to make it more than just a visual and more of an educational experience,” Saremi said. “I identify with the (women’s) movement because I am a woman, but maybe if someone is hesitant about it, this is a way to get the experience and work your way into it.”

About 30 percent of the participants were female, another aspect of the project that Saremi said made it meaningful.

“To be able to be one of the female representatives for the field and trying to get more interest for girls into the field matters,” Saremi said. “It’s a working thing. It’s still a process to get to the end where females are graduating successfully. It’s getting better, but it’s still not there.”

Not all participants came from Santa Cruz, and levels of experience varied among competitors and teammates.

Spencer Fricke traveled from the University of Wisconsin and goes out of his way to participate in hackathons. He said this is his 28th event, and his team ZenBeg wanted to create a new way to converse in groups by using virtual reality. Accessible through any device — laptop, tablet, or cell phones — their app allows groups to draw and communicate in 3-D.

“It was more of a technical challenge, trying to push the boundaries of technology,” Fricke said.

Partnering with Fricke was UCSC undergrad Max Khan, who said the event marked his first hackathon and that he was proud of what they were able to accomplish.

“It’s a natural progression of communication,” he said. “You have calling and you digitalize the voice, you are texting you digitize words, with VR you are digitizing physical three-dimensional artwork.”

Being able to come up with something new is one reason why Fricke said became interested in the field.

“The industry is not self-forming, it’s not natural” Khan said. “The only thing that is going to make advances in technology occur is for someone to build it, and at hackathons, this is phase one. We are the frontier.”

Their idea paid off: ZenBeg took first place for Innovation, followed by Deep Shirt and Protein Viewer in third. Other awards were granted by individual sponsors and companies, and as the three-day event came to a close, bleary-eyed but accomplished hackers finally were able to power off.